🌀 14: Are We Destined to be Aching for More?

I saw an opera called Fat Pig on Sunday. It wasn’t great, so on Monday I published a response to the show, calling out the team behind it for failing to engage with the audiences and communities that their show was about—fat people.

I was pretty scared posting it because it’s (as of now) the most critical piece of writing I’ve published. Before we dive into the rest of this newsletter, I want to unpick some of my feelings about criticism and where I’m left feeling having written Lipstick on a (Fat) Pig.

First of all, I’m so glad I published it. A lot of very nice people said some very nice things about it. I’ve received so many messages about it, including from two lovely folks from fortyfivedownstairs chatting to me about how they can do better—this is so so so lovely to see.

On the other hand, no one from the creative teams of Fat Pig have reached out to me. One member of the team actually unfollowed me on Instagram. Fair enough. I guess I’m taking Guy Webster’s call for critics to lose friends to heart.

Which brings to me what I’ve been thinking about after publishing it: how do I feel being called a critic/reviewer/whatever? I’ve flitted between embracing ‘critic’ and avoiding it as a label for a while now.

It feels like my role as Maker + ‘Critic’ + Producer is incredibly precarious. What am I doing calling out a show at a venue when I secretly desperately would actually love to be programmed there myself? Is this me tearing down others to find a place for myself? Or is this me holding our sector to a higher standard so we can all make the world better? Can I separate the two? Can those reading my criticism separate them?

Another strand which complicates my role as ‘critic’ is the financial incentive I have as an artist and producer to build an audience. But what are the moral implications of building that audience through the criticism of other’s work?

I see so much theatre that of course I have thoughts about it, you know? I’d like to think they’re very good thoughts too. You don’t sit through hours of the most egotistical theatre you’ve seen in your life and NOT come out a better maker and thinker. When I see sh*t work I want to understand why it’s sh*t. I want to be able to perfectly capture the nuance of the sh*t to explain to friends in foyers why precisely they should avoid seeing the sh*t (sorry, but we all do it). But also: How can I avoid making those same mistakes in my own work?

In that light, it feels extractive to acknowledge that part of my criticism stems from a desire to make my work better. Not necessarily better than the artists I watch, but better than I could have made had I not witnessed their work, both the good and the bad.

My high school drama teacher once told me that if I really wanted to make theatre I needed to see theatre. That’s now something I treat as sacrosanct—to make theatre you have to see theatre. How many tone-deaf and bland performances have you seen from artists uninterested in the work of their peers? Great art comes from being situated amongst other great art, I think.

How can I claim to be a ‘critic’ then when my perspective is deeply blinded by my own opinions on what theatre should be and should do—the way it should move in the world. As much as I (genuinely) enjoyed Anne-Louise Sarks’ re-staging of The Removalists at MTC earlier this year, I struggled to write about it because the entire form of it is that of the theatre I most dislike—fourth walls, verisimilitude, linear drama, and f*cking actors playing characters.

What does it mean for my criticism when I would rather watch a sloppy post-dramatic direct address than sit through A Streetcar Named Desire again? (Maybe a bad example tbh, I’ll always go feral for Blanche.) Is it even useful to share my perspective on art when it’s so bound up in what I think good art is? I think critics are meant to engage with a work on its own terms but what if I think those terms are lazy, unconsidered, and harmful?

Maybe criticism and making and producing are all different ways of gesturing at where I want the world to be.

I mean how could I write a response to Fat Pig like any of these reviews did without acknowledging the monumental anti-fatness at the centre of their work? I fundamentally don’t believe work like Fat Pig should be on our stages outside of a deeply critical and educational context. So then I guess it’s my obligation as an artist, whichever sort of artist I may be in that moment (critic/producer/artist), to call it out.

So now what? Am I just a hater? An over-thinker? A real boy critic? A b*tchy artist? An obstructionist activist? An insightful cultural commentator?

Who’s to say.

Fat Pig. lmfao (laughing my fat ass off)

Monolith by Joel Bray and POV by re:group — SO GOOD. I yapped about these and some other shows on Instagram in my shiny new broadcast channel.

The other night I caught a preview of The Wrong Gods and on the weekend I got to see the opening of LEGENDS (of the Golden Arches), both from Melbourne Theatre Company.

What with both of them opening within a week of each other, it’s interesting to note the similarities between them—both investigations into the role of gods in the 21st century. 

LEGENDS focuses in on ritual and faith as a way to make sense of grief and change, reflecting on if/how we can transform rituals to serve us today. In contrast, The Wrong Gods is an examination of how capitalism & colonialism’s unchecked need for growth locks us into this toxic and never ending cycle, re-affirming traditional knowledge systems as the way to build a world that will last. 

LEGENDS, as theatrically bombastic as it is (THE PUPPETS IN THE SECOND HALF!!! y’all……:::), is weighed down by a lot of exposition—useful, no doubt, to grasp the nuances of Tong & Lui’s descent into Chinese hell, but it puts the two halves of the show on uneven terrain; perhaps reminiscent of the differences between Tong & Lui that Tim Byrne astutely described in The Guardian:

While the tenderness of their rapport gives the show its heart and complexity, as performers Lui and Tong are slightly mismatched; Tong is sharper and more controlled than Lui, whose physicality can be awkward and unpolished. Vocally, she is stronger and more richly modulated. But Lui’s probing intellectualism and crackling wit is crucial to the show’s success. Together they make a winning team.

On the other hand, The Wrong Gods resists theatrical tricks (as much as I love them) for a nuanced-if-dry political & family drama about (I swear it’s more interesting than this sounds) a mega-dam being constructed in rural India. This show’s strength is in its text from S. Shakthidharan (who wrote Counting & Cracking, one of the best pieces of theatre I’ve ever seen) which is a universal reminder of what’s at stake when people lose touch with country. There’s potent links to the First Nations struggle for land and self-determination in so-called-australia. I really loved it.

Both The Wrong Gods and LEGENDS come to a conclusion that myth is a vital source of knowledge about how to live, but one which must be continuously practiced and contextualised to offer us better ways of living, dying, and healing. 

I stole the title for this newsletter from a final monologue in The Wrong Gods, which made me think about queer futurity and Jose Esteban’s Muñoz‘s description of queerness as

the warm illumination of a horizon imbued with potentiality. We have never been queer, yet queerness exists for us as an ideality that can be distilled from the past and used to imagine a future.

S. Shakthidharan’s writing was so tantalising in the way that “Are we destined to be aching for more?” is both an aching critique of wealth accumulation, and a terrifying realisation that some lives require an unavoidable fight for rights and recognition. For some of us, we’ve no choice but to live a life screaming for more.

I was so certain I’ve shared this link on here before just based on how often I think about it but I‘m fairly certain I haven’t, so here you go. I hope you became as obsessed as I’ve been.

Austin Wade Smith (AWS) is a queer non-binary technologist who, in this imaginative essay, writes about using the infrastructure of the internet in ways that connect us with the natural world. AWS begins by experimenting with only charging their phone through a solar panel.

When the battery ran off, it was time to log off. The consequence of this simple change in mechanic was significant for me. I began counting tabs, adjusting screen brightness, only keeping conversations active if they felt significant. Running technology off of conditional energy created a dialogue between me and the sun where there was once a unidirectional model of consumption. I felt like I actually held my phone for the first time, and considered its power a matter of respect.

They call this approach to technology feral, a process of “re-entangling technology into the diverse networks of the living world.”

This polemic is really an invitation to see our relationship with technology in any other way, than that which makes the world “easier” to us. How can we create technology which doesn’t only make the world easier, but bigger, more awesome, more expressive. The alternative is to be lulled into somnambulance through a false sense of security that the world is no longer wild.

I‘ve recently been going down a rabbit hole of queer/feminist approaches to technology. The feminist server manifesto is great. Stuff like the solar protocol expands on AWS’ call to release servers from their farms in a fascinating way. I found an entire network of websites hosted on one random Android phone in Berlin. When the battery goes out, the site’s down—and that’s that. It’s linked here but the link (as I write this) isn’t working. I hope you come across it at a time they’ve charged up the phone!

This sort of human (and fundamentally queer) approach to technology feels like a life-raft in the flood of AI and bullsh*t social media. I wish I was a better web developer than I am; that I could contribute in some way to this messy queer digital world more than my humble knowledge of HTML allows.

In the wake of an American newspaper unwittingly publishing an AI-generated reading list, Dan Sinker reflects on what it means about the way we engage with our world.

It's so emblematic of the moment we're in, the Who Cares Era, where completely disposable things are shoddily produced for people to mostly ignore.

It’s a solid read, and a nice reminder that we should give a sh*t about everything going on at the moment.

I’ll finish off my readings this week with a stunning little article which I linked in my Fat Pig review. It’s exploring what the rise of GLP-1 medications like Ozempic mean for those of us who’ve learnt to love and be happy in our fat bodies.

Kate Bernyk writes about the loss of knowledge it would be to lose body diversity:

Where would we be without the artists, thinkers, and creators who refused to conform? The idea of eliminating any kind of body should terrify us—not just because it’s wrong, but because it’s unimaginative.

It’s just banger after banger in this article.

If I really am the last fat person, I’ll fight to stand tall in this body. Not as a relic, but as proof that there’s another way to exist. I’ll try my damndest to hold my ground because I’ve learned that living authentically—in whatever body you have—is its own kind of freedom.

Yes. That.

• A fascinating review of a 24 hour performance featuring one actress performing the same scene hundreds of times with different male performers every time. Sounds bonkers.
• F*ck I wish I saw this! A one on one site-specific magic show examining misinformation??? Artists are so cool!!!!

It’s been a whirlwind! Melbourne Fringe registrations are done which is such a relief. I forget every year how big a registration form it is are until I do it. It’s so good, very thorough, but goodness me. Between that and the job application grind, I am questioned out!

We had a final photoshoot for one of our fringe shows which was very fun. I love just doing everything lo-fi and at home. We did the shoot in one of our cast members bathrooms with some borrowed lights and random props from our lives strewn around the place. Very cute photo which I can’t wait to share with you (and tell you all about the show we’re doing!!!! It’s actually going to be sooo fun.)

I hosted a powerpoint night about a week ago or so at my place which was real delightful. We originally had a five minute time limits for each act but after a lot of last minute cancellations (life really does happen) we let everyone go as long as they wanted. Georgie gave us a run down on what her high school friends are up to now, Simran analysed the political leanings of the cast of Bravo’s Summer House, Dan did an overview of the rise of indie politicians in Australia over the last decade or so, Chelsea presented a ranking of every Arnott biscuit ever (I had no clue we had such diversity of biscuits in this country), and I critiqued the method every Olympic Games since 2000 has chosen to light their respective Olympic cauldrons. A niche one, but a long-standing special interest.

Following that review I wrote earlier in the week, I’ve been thinking about how good it felt to make Full Cream and share it with fat audiences. I actually really miss it (thank god there’s a recording of it on YouTube you can watch).

I had the opportunity to read one of the chapters in Jonno’s PhD on fat dramaturgy, one of two about Full Cream. Apart from how surreal it felt to have very intuitive decisions we made in rehearsal be analysed as rigorous and very smart academic choices, it was a fascinating read, reminding me just how badly our stages need complex and affirming visions of fat folks.

Jonno, Georgie, and I have been toying with this idea of a post-apocalyptic show about fatness for a while and I’d love to make it soon—it feels like there’s more of a critical mass of fat makers around, plus the way conversations about fatness have shifted since 2023 is wild to see. What would happen in a show set after the world has ended? Where just those fat enough to survive the nuclear winter are left? Is your (skinny) apocalypse the way to my (fat) utopia? If it’s just me and the whales left, what would us two blubbery creatures say to each other? Early days but y’all I’m excited!

Is it messy of me to add one final point to the Fat Pig saga and tell you that the creative team published an AI generated summary of their opera on their site?

No wonder I felt like I was hallucinating watching the show; because for all I know the show was made based on a dramaturgy hallucinated by AI for artists uninterested in engaging critically with the work itself. All considered, a remarkable low point in theatre in this city.

Anywho, I’ll see ya next newsletter.